Fishing with Brad, Zachary, and Jim 6/8/18

The forecast was for east winds, but luckily the wind speed wasn't what was originally forecast, so we were able to travel around pretty easily. My first plan was to take them where they could fish in their 18' boat if the lake was rough, but we ended up going to places further out since the lake was decent.

We launched at Catawba at 5:45 and headed north to the west side of the islands. I showed them how to use the line counter reels, and explained why we use the Precision Trolling Data app to figure out how much line to put out. They learned how to set the boards out, to get them in "marching soldier formation", and then how to reel in an outside board without moving the inside boards...because, we all know the outside bait is the one that gets the fish most often. Ha!

It took a few tries for them to get the routine down, but the fish gave them a lot of practice. I didn't like all the mayflies I saw on the Helix screen and thought that maybe going to the east side of the islands would show fewer. While it did, there was still an abundance of them coming up. Hopefully, we'll have a south wind when they do emerge from the lake, so Canada can deal with the mess on land. :)

We ran the same program I've run the past couple weeks...#11 Flicker Minnows 45/55/65 back at 2.1-3.4mph. Interesting though, at one point, someone who didn't know the rules of the road out there, and was cutting me off (even though I was the ONLY boat in that area) caused me to speed up to 2.6-2.9mph, to keep him from interfering with our lines, made the fish go crazy. All at once we had three fish on. So, that told me I should speed things up a bit, and after we did, the guys were kept busy with a steady bite.

We made one more move to the protected side of Catawba, due to one of the crew feeling a bit queezy when the winds kicked up a little and we were in 1-3's. As it turned out....we had a good bite over there too, an the fish were even a little bit bigger. So, let that be a lesson to you all...you don't have to go far from the launch to catch fish! ;)

I was off this weekend, due to my customer wanting to know last Thursday if the weather was going to be a problem, and when the forecast was showing strong ENE winds and 80% chance of thunderstorms, they moved their dates to July.....so, as usual, the forecast changed for the better since I rescheduled them....you're all welcome! Ha!

I won't be back out until the 13th, and will be going out of Huron, since the customer bought a place over there and would like to learn the area.  

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls